Category: Recipes (Page 7 of 8)

Veggie Salad Lunch

May 14, 2018 / Chris Brown / 0 Comments

I love a Veggie Salad Lunch and this makes an easy lunch filled with vitamins and fiber. All delicious and made up of fresh veggies.

Cherry tomatoes
Green pepper
Green cabbage
Cucumber
Avocado
Onion
Celery
Lemon
Olive Oil
Cider Vinegar
Salt and Pepper

Chop, dice, slice and cut up vegetables to similar size. You can add other things depending on what is in your kitchen!

I used a larger knife to cut some of the vegetables because that little paring knife worked well for some things, not so well for others. I cut just a little bit of cabbage and then diced it really small. It almost looked like riced cauliflower when I was done. I would have added carrots and cauliflower if there was some in the fridge. I did have spinach, but I ate that at breakfast with my eggs.

Mix together in a big bowl. Squeeze lemon juice from lemon. Add oil and vinegar. Salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy!!

Not shown: cider vinegar, salt, pepper.

What did you have for lunch?

Healthy Dishes to Bring to Potluck

May 7, 2018 / Chris Brown / 3 Comments

Healthy Potluck Veggie Salad

With the warmer weather, it is potluck season. My bike group likes to get together to ride after work and then have a potluck following.

One challenge for me is what to bring to the potluck. Over the past few years, I’ve opted for a veggie salad minus the lettuce. Basically I chop, dice or grate the veggies. Instead of adding it to lettuce, I skip the lettuce and the veggies become the salad.

We have several vegetarians who sometimes ride. The challenge becomes the protein. I like to add beans – either chick peas (garbanzo beans), kidney, or black beans for protein. (I rinse them first by running water over them and draining.) Sometimes I’ll add a hard boiled egg to top the salad.

Dressing is usually the same: olive oil, cider vinegar and lemon juice. Add a little salt and pepper and good to go.

Advantages of this healthy potluck veggie salad:

Can cut the veggies on Sunday night after grocery shopping
Keeps well during the bike ride with just an ice bag in a zip lock under and over
Left overs make a good side for lunch the next day
Colorful veggies makes it inviting
It’s never the same twice
Low in calories, filling and quite yummy
It’s easy and you don’t have to measure anything

What healthy dish do you like to bring to potlucks?

Healthy Snacks

April 30, 2018 / Jill McCauslin / 1 Comment

Chris and I have decreed Monday to be recipe day in the Becoming Elli world. Why? Who knows but we like it. Rather than give you a recipe today, I’m going to list some snacks that I enjoy, just to give you some fresh ideas. I try to include protein with my carbs in my healthy snacks. Some fat is usually a good idea too.

Here are some healthy snacks that I enjoy:

Hummus with sugar snap peas. You can use any vegetable or combination of vegetables you want but I love a snack of sugar snap peas with hummus. Fantastic!
A handful of nuts. This works but if you’re too hungry, it’s easy to eat more nuts than you probably want to eat in one sitting.
Apple with peanut butter. Really, this is perfect. If you avoid peanuts, switch the peanut butter to almond butter.
Celery with peanut butter. I know you have to be careful with peanut butter because it is high in calories but it does taste good.
Cheese stick. Yes, just like the ones you used to give your 10 year old child.
Plain yogurt with berries. If you give plain yogurt or plain Greek yogurt a chance, you’ll learn to like it. You can also add some granola to this.
Hard boiled egg
Even better, deviled eggs!
A few of my famous oatmeal balls. See the recipe I shared earlier.
Tuna salad wrapped in romaine lettuce.
Cottage cheese, if you eat dairy. You could add some fruit to this.
Pumpkin seeds
Shrimp cocktail. I sometimes buy just a few shrimp at the grocery store and then enjoy them as a snack.
Sardines! Just eat them right out of the can if you want.
Sweet peppers stuffed with goat cheese. I buy these from my local grocer.
Dark chocolate with a cup of tea
A small serving of oatmeal
Some baked beans. These actually make a good snack. Avoid brands that are high in sugar.
Soup: heat a bowl and enjoy!
Kind bars. I love these things and they’re what I buy if I have to grab something at a store for a snack.

These are just some ideas. What have I missed?

Unrolled Cabbage Rolls in the Instant Pot

April 16, 2018 / Chris Brown / 0 Comments

I figured I’d try some unrolled cabbage rolls because someone was telling me that they are so easy to make. They were right! While my first Instant Pot recipe attempt was yummy, it didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to, because I “adjusted” the recipe so many different ways.

I usually go grocery shopping on Sunday evening and I wanted to clear out some of the refrigerator before I got back from the store. Since the weather was nice and rainy, I figured a warm, hearty serving of Unrolled Cabbage Rolls would be great.

To start, I googled “cabbage, beef, instant pot” and got lots of choices of recipes. Each sounded better than the next. I picked one that sounded good and started sauteing the beef while I cut up the vegetables.

Here’s a few of the ways I modified it:

Onion was missing, I thought there was still a half somewhere in the fridge, but it got used up on Saturday
Substituted a jar of pasta sauce for diced tomatoes
Missed out on the Worcestershire sauce
Added more cabbage than the recipe called since, I had it all chopped up
Skipped the raisins
Only used about half of the brown rice, since the bag was almost empty
Made chicken broth in the VitaMix to use up the left over chicken meat/stock that was cooked on Friday (instead of using beef stock)

I like how you put everything into one place, press a few buttons, add a bit more and put the lid on to cook. That way, when you come home, it’s all ready to serve. The Instant Pot automatically keeps the food warm until you’re ready to eat. This recipe makes lots of leftovers too which is a big win.

Even with all these revisions and modifications, dinner was delicious. Filling and satisfying on a rainy Sunday!

Do you use an Instant Pot? What’s your favorite recipe?

Inside Out Egg Rolls – Healthy and Delicious

March 3, 2018 / Chris Brown / 4 Comments

I’m always on the look out for delicious recipes that are healthy and easy to make. Inside Out Egg Rolls certainly fill the bill. Finding something that adds important vegetables into my diet while satisfying the “yummy meter” is a win-win.

One of my friends from the gym – Angie – posted a recipe that was similar to this. It inspired my version of the Inside Out Egg Rolls and I’ve made it for the past three weeks in a row. It has become a staple in my household. Each time I’ve made it a little differently. You can certainly modify this to make it your own!

The way I classify this as an Inside Out Egg Roll recipe is the consistency of the finished veggies. While you can add whichever vegetables you feel satisfy the requirements of an egg roll, the ones I especially like are shredded cabbage, shredded carrots, and some tiny broccoli pieces. This recipe also can make good use of large broccoli stems that can be shredded and saved for adding to your own unique egg roll.

To make it even easier, you can buy a bag of shredded veggies to dump into this one-pan meal.

Ingredients:

Olive oil (if desired)
1/4 pound of ground beef (per person)
Chicken stock or veggie stock
Cup of water
White and/or red cabbage – shredded
Carrots – shredded
Broccoli – shredded
Romaine lettuce – chopped
Kale leaves – chopped
Medium onion – diced
Celery – sliced
Spices – soy sauce or salt/pepper to taste

Instructions for Inside Out Egg Rolls:

Brown the burger beef. Drain any fat (if desired.)
Add a little olive oil if you feel it is too dry.
Add chicken stock (or veggie stock) with water.
Warm stock and water.
Put veggies into same pan.
Stir to saute veggies.
Add some soy sauce to taste.
Add pepper to taste.

I was amazed how yummy this was. I like using a little bit of chicken stock and no soy sauce, but that is just me.

It is very fast cooking – especially if you have prepped the veggies on a Sunday evening to make this a wonderful quick mid-week dinner. A fast, delicious and healthy meal makes it a really favorite with me for when I’m tight on time and want something that is good tasting and good for me. I also like that this provides another way to get some of those healthy cruciferous crunch collection vegetables into your meal.

What do you think? Are you going to try making some Inside Out Egg Rolls? Let me know how you modify this recipe by leaving a comment below.

Cooking with Cruciferous Crunch Collection

February 26, 2018 / Jill McCauslin / 4 Comments

I picked up this bag of Cruciferous Crunch at Trader Joe’s this week. It’s made up of shredded and chopped kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, green cabbage, and red cabbage. Trader Joe’s did all of the work of shredding the vegetables. Other stores are probably now carrying a similar product but if you have to, you could always make your own crunch collection. This was an impulse buy and it worked out well for me.

I basically decided to make some kind of salad or slaw with this. I think you could add to these ingredients or change them without problem. If I had some dried cranberries or dried cherries in the house, I would have added them to the salad too. Slivered almonds or pignon nuts would have worked in place of the chopped cashews. I think you could also swap out the almond butter with tahini. I think peanut butter might be a bit too strong a flavor but if you try it, let me know.

Ingredients

1 bag of Trader Joe’s Cruciferous Crunch Collection or several cups of chopped kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, green cabbage and red cabbage

Dressing:

1/4 cup of almond butter
Juice of 2 limes
2 Tbs apple cider vinegar
1 Tbs. dijon mustard
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic powder

Garnish:

chopped cashews (optional)
dried cranberries (optional)

Directions:

Mix the ingredients for the salad dressing in a small jar and mix well. Make sure the almond butter is well blended with the other ingredients.

Empty the bag of vegetables into a large bowl and then pour the dressing over. Stir the salad well.

Serve immediately or cover and put in the refrigerator. It tastes better if allowed to sit for a while. I’ve kept this up to three days and it’s been fine. It might have lasted longer but it was eaten before I could determine its end date.

When you serve the salad, add some chopped cashews and/or dried cranberries on top. The nuts will go soggy if mixed into the salad early, so wait and add them immediately before eating.

Healthy Chili on a Chilly Day

February 1, 2018 / Chris Brown / 0 Comments

I love a warm bowl of chili on a chilly day when the weather is beyond brisk and down right cold. Here’s my quick and easy go-to chili recipe that I find is both tasty and healthy. I like to use grass fed beef, it has little grease and tastes better to me. I love this on days when the temperature is below freezing outside!

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion – diced (or chunked)
1 sweet red pepper – diced (or chunked)
1/4 pound of beef
1 (15 oz) can of kidney beans – drained & rinsed
1 can of water (I use the kidney bean can as the measuring can)
1 can of Ro*tel diced tomatoes with chopped green chilies
1 shake of cinnamon

Heat the olive oil on medium heat and add the onion. I like to use a deep frying pan so I can make the entire chili using only one pan. (Less to clean up later.) Stir the onions lightly until almost translucent. (I think that is called saute, right?) Add red pepper for another minute or two. Remove both and put in small bowl. Sometimes I make the onions and peppers small, but other times when I make it, I like chunks of veggies. So it ends up more like a chili stew.

Brown the ground beef. Separate it as you cook it on medium heat. Add the onions and peppers back into the pan. Drain and rinse the kidney beans and add to beef mixture. Add a can of water. Add diced tomatoes.

Simmer. Add a shake or two of cinnamon to taste. That’s my *secret* ingredient. Cook on medium heat for about 10 minutes to let the favors mix together. I like to have it with some shredded cheddar cheese on top or over a small bowl of whole grain spaghetti. (I use the same bowl that I put the onions and peppers in while the ground beef was browning.)

If you like it a little more spicy, you can add some chili powder. Some people like to saute some garlic before they brown the meat. If your meat has a lot of fat, you may want to drain before adding in the onions and peppers. Or you might want more or less water. Or add some tomato sauce.

Adding more vegetables makes it more bulky and more healthy in my opinion. Ive been known to microwave sliced carrots and celery to add. Or stir in some spinach for more nutrition.

Everyone I talk with about chili has their own favorite recipe or ingredient for making a delicious bowl of chili. What’s yours?

Sardine Salad or How to Get Sardines in Your Diet

January 24, 2018 / Jill McCauslin / 2 Comments

The standard health message these days is to eat lots of veggies and try to get oily seafood into your diet a couple times a week. I don’t know if that’s really a healthy diet, but it sounds reasonable, though I’m not sure referring to fish as oily is all that palatable. Oily seafood includes tuna, salmon, and sardines. It seems like every diet or healthy eating book I pick up recommends eating sardines. I usually try to add protein to my salads so making a sardine salad seemed like a good idea.

Sardines are not my favorite food. They remind me of eating them on a Saltine cracker, and it’s not my best childhood memory. Maybe I’d like sardines on a cracker now, but I still haven’t tried them.

In a burst of sardine enthusiasm, I bought a stack of sardine cans at Costco. Then I had to figure out how to eat them. I tried adding sardines straight onto a salad and it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. I decided there had to be a way to improve the flavor of sardines and have a healthy meal.

This recipe is what I came up with. As seems to be the case with most of my recipes, you can adjust the ingredients to fit what you have on hand. If you don’t have lemon juice, just use all vinegar and if you don’t have vinegar, use all lemon juice.

Ingredients for Sardine Salad

1 4.34 ounce can of sardines packed in water or oil

¼ cup finely diced onion

1 celery stalk, diced finely

1 carrot, diced finely

¼ cup red bell pepper, diced finely

¼ cup olive oil

2 Tbs apple cider vinegar

2 Tbs lemon juice

Salt to taste

Pepper to taste

Salad greens

Directions for Sardine Salad

Drain the sardines. Put into a small mixing bowl and break up into small pieces.

Add the onion, celery, carrot, and bell pepper. Mix well.

Add the olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Mix well.

Put salad greens on a plate and top with a generous scoop of the sardine mixture.

This makes two to three servings.

Variations

If you don’t drain the sardines and use that liquid, reduce the olive oil by half.

The vinegar and lemon juice do not have to be in equal proportions. If you don’t have one, use all of the other.

If you want a creamier version, replace with olive oil with the mayonnaise of your choice.

Yummy Sauteed Keto Cabbage

January 15, 2018 / Jill McCauslin / 0 Comments

Here’s a recipe I’ve read variations of on different Keto sites. I can’t believe I’m going to say this about a cabbage dish, but I LOVE this recipe. It’s so easy and cabbage is so inexpensive, and it keeps for a long time. This is a great change from making coleslaw or that infamous diet cabbage soup.

I’ll write a post about Keto diets later, but a quick definition of Keto is a diet consisting of high fat, moderate protein, and low carbs.

If you’re hesitant about eating fat, you’ll have to modify how you make this dish. I think you could make this with olive oil but I’ve never tried it. I’ve written this up using butter but I’ve seen similar recipes that recommend bacon grease or coconut oil.

This dish is great to accompany chicken or a sausage like bratwurst or kielbasa. I often eat leftovers as a kind of breakfast has by reheating it and topping it with a fried egg.

Ingredients

Cabbage: A quarter of a good size cabbage makes a generous serving for one or two people.

3 to 4 TBS of Butter

Directions for making Sauteed Keto Cabbage

Slice the cabbage in half and remove the core. Cut as much cabbage as you want to cook into small pieces.
Melt the butter in a heavy skillet.
Add the cabbage and cook at medium heat until the cabbage becomes golden brown and very tender, about 20 minutes or so.
Serve.

If you’re trying keto, you may want to try out this Sauteed Keto Cabbage recipe. What’s your favorite way to prepare cabbage?

High Energy, Easy to Make Protein Oatmeal Balls

January 12, 2018 / Jill McCauslin / 1 Comment

I created these as a snack for someone who has food allergies, avoids sugar, and wants protein mixed in with carbs. He uses them as an energy snack. Chris and I tried them on a long run and they work pretty well. Because the balls are small, they’re easy to carry for a run and they’re easy to eat while on the trail.

These oatmeal balls are easy to make and pretty tasty, considering there’s not much in them. They are dairy free and sugar free. If you use gluten free oats, they would also be gluten free.

I don’t use sugar or sweeteners and with the banana, I don’t think you need it but if you wanted it sweeter, you could add some honey or whatever you want to use.

You could easily doctor these up with raisins or chocolate chips or nuts but I haven’t tried that yet. If you want to increase the fat, use whole eggs instead of the egg whites.

The recipe can be doubled or tripled and the amounts are flexible. If you don’t have much apple sauce, increase the egg whites.

I used these oatmeal balls last summer as a running snack. They’re small enough that you can pop them in your mouth and have a tasty bite of energy.

So, here you go. Here’s the basic recipe. Remember that you can expand this by simply increasing the ingredients. This is a very forgiving recipe.

Oats, apple, egg whites, applesauce, and bananas

Ingredients

2 bananas (the riper the better)

1 cup natural applesauce

½ cup egg whites

½ tsp cinnamon (you can definitely increase this)

2 to 3 cups old fashioned or quick cooking oatmeal (not instant and not steel cut)

1 apple, peeled, cored, and diced

Apples

Directions

Preheat oven to 350.

Line cookie sheets with parchment paper. Note: foil won’t work. The balls stick to the oatmeal. I suspect it’s because there’s no fat in them.

Mash the bananas with a mixer. Add the applesauce, egg whites, and cinnamon and blend well.

Mixing ingredients

Add 2 cups of oatmeal. If the mixture is very wet, add the final cup.

Mix in the diced apple.

Drop small balls onto the cookie sheets. I use a small melon baller but spoons would work. There’s no leavening ingredients in this so the balls will not expand.

Bake each tray for 10 to 12 minutes. Remove from oven when the balls look darker or golden brown.

Slide each oatmeal ball onto a cooling rack.

These freeze well. Leave out some to eat over the next day or two but freeze the rest. These balls have no preservatives in them and only last two or three days.

Finished product